JJ Kapur '22

During the summer of 2019, I left the quiet suburbs of Iowa and spent three months working in the bustling city of New York. Supported by an Empowering Asian Americans Cardinal Quarter fellowship from Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service, I worked at the Sikh Coalition—the nation’s largest Sikh civil rights organization—creating films of Sikhs across the nation involved in seva (community service) as a way to combat negative stereotypes about the Sikh community.

Des Moines was like that bar in the show “Cheers,” where “everybody knows your name.” New York was...less cozy. Because I was living with a host-family upstate, I had a daily one-hour commute via New York’s famous (or infamous) subway system to lower Manhattan. Every morning, I would feel anxious as I squeezed my way into a packed subway at Grand Central Station. Most mornings, I would be so nervous to ask people to sit next to them that I would just stand the entire way. So even though—or perhaps precisely because—I was surrounded by so many people, I felt a profound sense of loneliness and anonymity.

I eventually learned to manage and integrate these elements of life in New York. I recharged by building a regular sleep cycle and incorporating mindfulness strategies on the subway such as listening to podcasts, deep breathing, and meditation.I also started to plan weekly dinners with my fellow interns and join my host-family for outings during the weekend like devouring dumplings in Flushing Chinatown with their two adorable kids. By the end of my summer, I no longer felt any of the loneliness, exhaustion, or anxiety that marked my first few weeks in New York. Instead, I found that approaching new experiences with intentionality helped me understand that a city so different from Des Moines can also be my home.